Quick exit for Melanie Oudin

This match slipped away from Melanie Oudin as quickly as her impatient forehands sailed out of the court, big bunches of errors coming faster and faster.

It disappeared into the hands of a steady but unspectacular 27-year-old Italian named Roberta Vinci.

“She’s 10 years older than me,” the 18-year-old Oudin said, exaggerating the age difference by a year.

Oudin, the highest-ranked American woman in the draw of the BNP Paribas Open at No. 41, made a quick exit from the tournament at Indian Well Tennis Garden on Thursday. She was a 3-6, 6-3, 6-0 loser to the 57th-ranked Vinci and afterward the shell-shocked teenager who had pounded her way to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open last fall had a quivery voice and a tentative match analysis.

“Bad day at the office,” she said.

It was the opposite for another American youngster, 16-year-old Sloane Stephens. Stephens, who trains at the Home Depot Center in Carson, qualified into the main draw and then beat Lucie Hradecka of the Czech Republic, 7-6 (5), 7-6 (7).

It was the first WTA Tour main draw win for Stephens, who is ranked No. 747 in the world. She couldn’t remember her match-point winning shot. She did remember the on-the-line ace she hit to tie the second-set tiebreak at 6-6. After that it was a blur.

So was the third set for Oudin.

The match began as if it would be a routine win. Her ground stroke depth kept Vinci off balance and caused Oudin to think, “I was cruising. And then, things just started going her way.”

Vinci won nine of the first 10 points of the second set and when her serve was broken in the first game of the third set at deuce, Oudin seemed to head into warp speed, moving constantly but accomplishing little.

“It kind of started getting away from when I lost all those points in a row at the beginning of the second set,” Oudin said. “She rushed me a little bit and I wasn’t able to slow it down and calm down, which is what I should have done. I needed to keep the rallies longer and instead I was too impatient.”

Like Oudin, Stephens had gained notice at last year’s U.S. Open when she won a first-round match in the junior tournament, then left to attend the funeral of her father, former NFL player John Stephens.

Stephens wasn’t overly ecstatic with her first main-draw win. She was matter of fact. She described having a tough time after the Open because of tendinitis in her left wrist. “My ranking dropped to, like, nothing,” she said. “One of my goals was to win a main-draw match. Now I have. It’s very cool.”

[email protected]

twitter.com/mepucin